Printed in the Executive Intelligence Review,

Lt. Col. David Grossman (ret.) has co-authored a
new book, Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call To Action
Against TV, Movie & Video Game Violence, with Gloria
DeGaetano (New York: Random House, 1999) (reviewed in last
week's EIR.) Jeffrey Steinberg and Dennis Speed heard
Colonel Grossman speak at a conference on ``Shock
Violence,'' sponsored by the New Jersey Psychological
Association, in Princeton, New Jersey on March 4, and then
interviewed him by phone on March 7.

A former U.S. Army Ranger, Colonel Grossman now helps
to train military, police, and emergency rescue units
throughout the United States. He is a former professor at
West Point and the University of Arkansas, and he is now
the director of the Killology Research Group, in
Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Steinberg: I'd like to start out by asking you about
a new book that you've co-authored, called Stop Teaching
Our Kids to Kill. It's a very provocative title. Can you
give us a summary the book, and tell us something about
what prompted you to write this book?

Grossman: Well, my first book is on killing. It's
being used as a textbook worldwide--it's about enabling
killing, in the way the military does it. And, at the end
of that book, I put a short section on how the techniques
that the military uses to enable killing, are being used
indiscriminately, without the safeguards, on our children.

And, that really, really generated an enormous amount
of attention. The book is being used as a textbook in law
enforcement, and in military communities, and in peace
studies programs around the world. It just draws in topics
from different directions.

Well, then I ended up living--I retired from the Army
in February 1998, and in March 1998, two boys, 11 and
13 years old, gunned down 15 people in my hometown. In the
absence of anybody better qualified, I was one of the
trainers of mental health professionals on the night of
the shootings, and helped do the debriefings of the
teachers, the next morning, 18 hours after they'd been in
the kill-zone of the largest schoolyard massacre in
American history.

And, after what happened there, I found myself to be
pretty motivated to make a statement about that. I ended
up speaking at a couple of peace conferences. I had an
article that was incredibly well-received, an article of
mine, called ``Teaching Our Kids To Kill.'' I just got an
e-mail today that says that the German translation of it
has 40,000 reprints sold. It was printed in Christianity
Today, Hinduism Today, U.S. Catholic, and the Saturday
Evening Post; and translated into eight different
languages. Just Christianity Today, alone, as of last
summer, has sold 60,000 reprints of it. It really laid the
foundation for us to understand that this is a topic that
people are open to.

We started writing this latest book. My co-author,
Gloria DeGaetano, who is one of our nation's leading media
literacy experts, had written a previous, wonderful book
on this topic. And, then the Littleton shootings happened,
about a year later, and we were in the process of
marketing the book. All of a sudden, the level of interest
in this topic just skyrocketted. We were able to sell it
to Random House, their Crown Books division, and they've
been very, very supportive. I got the first royalty
statement that came out in mid-October, and just in
October-November-December, we'd sold about 20,000 hardback
copies--which is not too bad. We are continuing to crank
along at a real high rate. I just looked it up on
Amazon.com, and we're about number 1,700 out of 4 million
titles in the world: That's not too shabby.

We're out there touching some lives and making a
difference with this book, and we feel pretty strongly
about it. Certainly, I was honored to read the review that
EIR wrote on the book, and I certainly appreciate your
very kind and perceptive words about it.

Steinberg: In the opening chapter of the book, you
state, pretty definitively, that every major serious
study, medical and otherwise, that's been done for the
last 25 years or so, shows that there is a very high
correlation between exposure to violence in the media, and
the rate of growth of violence in society. Could you say
something about that?

Grossman: It's important to point out, up front,
that we're talking about visual violent imagery; that, the
written word can't be processed until age 8, and it is
filtered through the rational mind. The spoken word can't
be processed until age 4, and it, too, has to be filtered
in the forebrain before it trickles down to the emotional
center. But, these violent visual images: At the age of 18
months, a child is fully capable of perceiving and
imitating what they see. And, at the age of 18 months,
these violent visual images, whether they be television,
movies, or video games, go straight into the eyes, and
straight into the emotional center.

The body of research on this is simply stunning. And,
we catalog it in the back of our book, in a chronology of
findings on this topic. The American Medical Association
[AMA], the American Psychological Association, the Surgeon
General, the National Institute of Mental Health--it just
goes on, and on, and on. There's a major Unesco study on
the topic. Just last week, I got an International
Committee of the Red Cross study on the topic, identifying
how a worldwide culture of violence--and especially some
horrendous barbarism in war--appears to be directly linked
to media violence. As the United Nations study put it (not
a direct quote), but essentially what the Unesco study
said in 1998 was, that a worldwide culture of violence is
being fed by media violence. And, in particular, American
media violence is being exported, like some Colombian drug
lord, exporting death and horror, to put money into the
hands of a few.

It's so pervasive, it's so overwhelming, that those
who argue against it, are like those who argue that
tobacco doesn't cause cancer.

Now, there is a body of research out there, that is
horrendously irresponsible; essentially, this group of
individuals, who are funded by the media, who have sold
their soul--it's kind of like the people who deny that
the Holocaust happened. And, it's pretty scary.

You and Dennis just happened to be in a conference
there, in New Jersey, when we had a closing panel. I had
presented that morning, and this one guy stands up, and
says: You can't prove media violence makes violent crime,
and it's never been demonstrated, and it's not true. Well,
that was the New Jersey Psychological Association, which
is a member of the parent organization, the American
Psychological Association.

In 1992, the national body of the American
Psychological Association said, ``The scientific debate is
over.'' In 1999, the American Psychological Association
said, to argue [that media violence does not cause real
violence], is like arguing against gravity. So, for the
man to stand up, in front of this--the New Jersey
Psychological Association--and claim it, is like standing
up at B'nai B'rith and claiming that you can't prove that
the Holocaust happened, and it never happened.

Steinberg: The guy should have had his Ph.D.
confiscated on the spot!

Grossman: I certainly think he should have! And,
it's like this, guys: If you ask the tobacco industry
about the link between tobacco and cancer--up until very
recently--what would they do? They'd deny it. They'd lie.
In the face of the Surgeon General and the AMA, they'd
lie. They'd bring out their pet scientists, their stooge
researchers on a leash, and try to deny the undeniable.

Well, in the same way, if you were to ask the media
industry about the link between their product--television,
movies, video games--what would they do? They would lie.
In the face of every major scientific and scholarly body
in the world, they'd bring their pet scientists, their
stooge researchers on a leash, to come out there and claim
otherwise.

But, it truly, truly, is as though somebody was
trying to claim that the Holocaust didn't happen, or that
tobacco doesn't cause cancer. And, it's pretty sad stuff.

Steinberg: Let's take up the question of the
point-and-shoot violent video-games. I was very struck by
some of the examples that you gave in the book, that some
of the training simulators that are being used by the U.S.
Army and by the majority of law-enforcement agencies are
virtually identical to some of the most popular arcade
violent point-and-shoot video games. Tell us how this
works.

Grossman: One of the things you've got to
understand is this: We discovered, in World War II, that
the majority of our soldiers were not able to kill in
combat. And, the fundamental flaw was in our training. We
gave them wonderful weapons. We had magnificent Americans.
We put them in the front lines, and we had trained them to
shoot at bulls-eye targets. Now, when no bulls-eye
appeared in in front of them, the training failed them!
The vast majority of the time. Under stress, with fear,
and other dynamics, the training simply failed them.

What we know today, is, that if we want a soldier to
be able to use the weapon that we've issued him--I mean,
God forbid, that a soldier, a police officer, should take
a human life--but, if we give them the weapon, then we
have to acknowledge a responsibility to give him the
ability to use that weapon. We realized that shooting at
bulls-eye targets was not where it was at. If we take a
pilot, we don't just suddenly put him in an airplane, and
have him fly that airplane after having him read a manual
about it. We put him in flight simulators first. Even in
World War II, we had a vast array of data about
simulators, in which they could rehearse, rehearse,
rehearse the action.

Well, we realized that what we had to do was create
killing simulators. And, instead of bulls-eye targets
popping up in front of our soldiers, we needed man-shaped
silhouettes. Now, these are extraordinarily effective
training devices. In recent years, we realized that, we
don't even have to use a real gun; it's useful, it's
effective to use real guns on real ranges, and we still do
that, but it's quite expensive. There's a lot of lead,
there's a lot of environmental problems. We need vast
acres of land, we need lots of money. And, we began to
realize that we can just simply use simulators.

Now, these simulators, again, are vivid depictions of
human beings, and you're practicing shooting at human
beings. You're imitating the act. You understand, that
there is a vast chasm, between being a healthy American
citizen, and being able to take a human being's life. And,
in order to cross that chasm, you've got to put a stepping
stone--some kind of intermediate step, in which you
rehearse, rehearse the action, and wrap your mind around
the act.

Well, we've got these devices now, we use for the
military. The Marine Corps licensed the right to use
``Doom,'' as a tactical training device. The Army took the
Super-Nintendo--remember the old Duck Hunt game? We
replaced the plastic pistol with a plastic M-16, and,
instead of ducks flashing on the screen, it's man-shaped
silhouettes.

Now, we have several thousand of those that we use as
training devices around the world. These are effective.

Now. What I tell people is this: The goal is, to
allow our soldiers to respond properly. If our soldiers
cannot fire, or if our soldiers are frightened, bad
things are going to happen. Same thing with our police
officers. So, I submit, that this kind of training is a
needful thing: If we acknowledge that we have a need to
give soldiers and police officers weapons, then we have a
responsibility to give them the skill and the will to use
those weapons.

But, good people can disagree on that. The thing that
nobody should disagree on, is the fact that, if you're
even remotely troubled that we provide these kind of
killing rehearsals--killing simulators--to soldiers, and
police officers, how much more infinitely horrendous is
it, that we provide them indiscriminately to children?

I was called as an expert witness by the government
for the McVeigh case. I never had to go to the stand. I
did some consulting, put together a couple of papers for
them. What had happened was this: The defense was trying
to claim that the military and the Gulf War had turned
Timothy McVeigh into a killer. The reality is, that the
data are just the opposite: The returning veteran,
according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, is less
likely to be incarcerated than a non-veteran of the same
age. And, certainly, the off-duty police officer is
infinitely less likely to be incarcerated than a
non-police officer of the same age and sex.

There are powerful safeguards. What are the
safeguards? Well, number one, we do it to adults. Number
two: The discipline, the discipline, the discipline,
that's ground into your soul. The point is, that these
same video games--the law-enforcement community uses
what's called the FATS trainer, Fire Arms Training
Simulator. They spend many, many hours in front a
large-screen TV with human beings in front of them. And,
when that human being commits an act, under which, by the
law, it is legal and necessary to shoot, then, and only
then, does that law enforcement officer shoot. And if he
hits his target, the target drops; if he misses the
target, the target kills him.

As I said, these are powerful devices that have great
safeguards built into them, in which the goal is to teach
under what circumstances you can shoot. And, we'll talk
later about the Amadou Diallo case, and how important it
is, that we refine this training to better levels. And,
this overkill dynamic used to happen a lot more often.

The point is, the law-enforcement officer stands up
with a FATS trainer, and he holds a gun in his hand, he
pulls the trigger, the slide slams back, he feels the
recoil; if he hits the target on the screen, the target
drops; if he misses the target, the target shoots him.

Well, go to the video arcade, and play a game called
``Time Crisis.'' You hold the gun in your hand, you pull
the trigger, the slide slams back, you feel the recoil.
You hit the target, the target drops. You miss the target,
the target shoots you. This is a murder simulator. It is
no longer a killing simulator for individuals who,
reluctantly, under proper circumstances, we acknowledge,
maybe have to kill. It is a device placed in the hands of
children, whose only social characteristic is to give him
the skill and the will to kill.

And, it's important, too, to understand, that
whatever you drill in under stress, is coming out the
other end.

Back in the old days, when we had revolvers, our cops
would get out on the range, we'd fire six shots. Because
we didn't want to clean up the range afterwards, we'd flip
out the cylinder, drop the six expended cartridges in our
hand, put the empty brass in our pocket, reload, and keep
going. Now, obviously, you'd never do that in a real
gunfight--you got better things to do. But, guess what? We
found out that real cops, in real gunfights, would end the
gunfight with a pocket full of brass--and no idea how it
got there. The point is, that whatever you do in
training--just two times a year, the cops would
qualify--and six months later, they're in a gunfight, and
they end the gunfight with a pocket full of brass, and no
idea how it got there.

Whatever you train to do, under stress, is coming out
the other end. That's why we do fire drills. That's why we
do flight simulators.

Well, when the children play the violent video games,
they're drilling, drilling, drilling--not two times a
year--every night, to kill every living creature in front
of you, until you run out of targets or you run out of
bullets. Now, I usually stand in front of an audience, and
I say to the audience, ``Look, if I decide that she's one
point, then he's one point, and he's one point, and he's
one point, and he's one point, and she's one point, and
she's one point.

``Now, what's my goal? To rack up as many points as
possible.''

So, when these kids start shooting--we're reasonably
confident that in Pearl, Mississippi, and in Paducah,
Kentucky, and in Jonesboro, Arkansas, these juvenile,
adolescent killers set out to shoot just one person:
usually their girlfriend, in one case, maybe a teacher.
But, then, they kept on going! And, they gunned down every
living creature in front of them, until they ran out of
targets or ran out of bullets!

And, afterwards, the police asked them. They said,
``Okay. You shot the person you were mad at. Why did you
shoot all these others? Some of 'em were your friends!''
And the kids don't know.

But we know. Like a pilot in a flight simulator,
like a child in a fire drill--whatever is drilled into
them, is coming out the other end. And we are drilling
these kids to be killers, and to associate pleasure and
reward with it! And to cheer and to mock, when the vivid
depictions of human death and suffering occur in front of
them. And, the result is simply staggering and
horrendous, in the irresponsibility of this industry to
provide [children with] law enforcement- and
military-equivalent training. It is the psychological
equivalent of putting an M-16 or a Glock pistol in the
hands of every child in America.
Speed: There are a few things that immediately come
to my mind: For example, let's take the killing in Flint,
Michigan, with the 6-year-old. In your book, you make the
point that killing is not natural.

Grossman: Yeah. A lot of people want to kill,
and throughout history, we've had a tiny, tiny handful of
people who are able to kill. But, for the average, healthy
member of a society, it's not natural.

I'm an Army Ranger. They didn't just throw an M-16 in
my hands, and suddenly, I'm an elite killer. It took years
of training. We don't just create a SEAL team member. We
don't just take somebody, and put 'em in a blue uniform,
and throw a submachine gun in his hand, and suddenly, he's
a SWAT team member. It takes years and years of training,
to give people the skill and the will to kill.

Well, when these kids kill, we need to be asking
ourselves hard questions. Because this is new, Dennis.
This is a new phenomenon. In Jonesboro, an 11- and
13-year-old boy gunned down 15 people. When those kids
turn 21, they will be released--there's nothing on earth
we can do to prevent it. Because there were no laws on
the books to deal with adolescent killers at that age.

Now, this 6-year-old. They thought, in Michigan, they
had it licked: The brought the law down to 7. They said,
even 7 year olds can be classified as adults: And now,
we've got 6-year-old killers!

And, just days after the Flint, Michigan shootings,
there was a kid in Washington, who took a gun off a high
shelf, loaded, and jacked the ammo in the gun himself, and
went ouside, and fired two shots at a couple of kids. When
the police asked him where he had learned to load the
gun--thinking, I think maybe, that the father had
irresponsibly given that skill--the kid very innocently
said, ``Oh, I learned it from TV.''

The kid in Flint, Michigan: The sheriff went and
told the father, who is in prison, about it, and the
father said, ``As soon as I heard about it, chills came
down my spine, because I knew it was my boy. Because my
boy,'' he said something to the effect, ``had really,
really, liked the violent movies.''

Now, here was a kid that was already whacked-out on
media violence; whose father had sat, and watched, and
cheered, and laughed, and mocked, human death and
suffering. And, usually, at 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, the children
are horrified by this stuff. But, if you really, really
work at it, by the age of 6, you can teach 'em to like it!
And that is really, really despicable.

The Japanese, in World War II, used this kind of
classical conditioning, teaching people to associate
pleasure with depictions of human death and suffering, to
enable some horrendous atrocities. They used Pavlovian
conditioning: They took their young soldiers, that had
never been in combat, and had them witness these
horrendous massacres, butchery of these innocent
Chinese, British, and American prisoners. And, the young
soldiers were made to laugh and cheer and mock the
suffering. And, later that night, they were given the best
meal they'd had in months, and the sake is shipped in, and
the comfort girls are shipped in; and, like Pavlov's dogs,
they're taught to associate pleasure with human death and
suffering.

I'd ask, how many of your readers have seen
``Schindler's List''? And, I'd ask if there's anybody out
there who laughed at ``Schindler's List.'' I would hope
not.

Well, they played ``Schindler's List'' to a high
school outside of Los Angeles, and they had to turn it
off, because the children were laughing and mocking at
what was happening. Steven Spielberg came out to confront
that behavior, and to speak at that high school, and they
laughed and mocked him! Maybe that's just California;
maybe they're all wacko. Well, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the
shootings happened in the middle school; right next door
was the high school--the big brothers, the big sisters of
the little kids, who were shot to bits. And, one of the
teachers there in the high school told me that, when she
walked in and told her students about--they'd heard the
shots, they saw the ambulances pulling up--she told her
students, and their response was: They laughed and they
cheered.

One little girl wrote me from Chatham High School, in
Littleton, Colorado, right next to Columbine High School,
there--their rival school--she said, that when they
announced over the loudspeaker, in that high school that
somebody had opened fire and gunned down a bunch of people
at Columbine High School, she said the cheers were so
loud, that they echoed through the hallways, and you could
hear them in the office, way down the corridor!

Our children are being taught to derive pleasure from
human death and suffering, and that's what happened to
this little 6-year-old. Now, I'd bet you money, that this
6-year-old, also played the violent video games--

Steinberg: Yes, I can confirm that, from some of the
news coverage.

Grossman: And, again, why do I know the kid
played the violent video games? I'll tell you why! Because
he fired one shot, and got a direct hit in the base of
the skull. And it takes great skill to point with
accuracy. But the video games train you! And many of the
video games give bonus effects for head shots. This boy--I
believe that the evidence would indicate that he had
played on a murder simulator; his father had obviously
gotten him extremely whacked-out on media violence, on the
violent video games, and now we reap what we sow, at
younger and younger ages.

And the result is a tragedy.

I guess the classic example was in Paducah, Kentucky.
In Paducah, a 14-year-old boy stole a 22-caliber pistol
from a neighbor's house. Now, prior to stealing that gun,
he had never fired a pistol before in his life. He fired a
few shots, on a couple of nights before the killings, with
the neighbor boy. And, then he brought that gun into
school, and he fired eight shots.

Now, the FBI says that the average officer in the
average engagement hits with one bullet in five. In the
Amadou Diallo shooting, they fired 41 shots at point-blank
range, against an unarmed man: They hit 19 times.

The guy that went into the Jewish daycare center in
Los Angeles last summer, fired 70 shots, and hit five of
those helpless children.

So, this boy fires eight shots. How many hits does he
get? Eight shots, eight hits, on eight different children.
Five of them are head shots. The other three are upper
torso. This is stunning.

I trained the Texas Rangers; I trained the California
Highway Patrol; I trained a battalion of Green Berets. And
never, in the history of law enforcement, or military, or
criminal annals, can we find an equivalent achievement! It
is not some deranged Ranger, like me! It's a 14-year-old
boy, that's never fired a pistol before stealing that gun!
Now, where did he get that incredible, unprecedented
skill? Well, when he committed that crime, he planted his
feet--and, according to all witness statements, he never
moved his feet throughout the crime. He held the gun up at
a two-handed stance. He never fired far to the left; he
never fired far to the right. He just put one bullet in
every target that popped up on his screen.

He's playing his stinking video game! It is not
natural to put one bullet in every target! The natural
thing to do, is to shoot at your target until it drops.
Anybody who's ever hunted with an automatic weapon, or
has been in combat, will tell you, that the natural thing
to do, is to shoot at your target, until your target
drops, and then go to another. But, what do the video
games train you to do? One shot, one kill, with bonus
effects for head shots.

This is so stunning, that there is now a $130 million
Federal lawsuit against the video-game industry. But--get
this--when we're talking about legislation to control this
industry: I testified before the Senate and the House, the
New York State legislature, the Washington legislature,
the New Jersey legislature, and just last week, I
testified before the Minnesota state legislature. Well,
the lobbyist from the video-game industry stood up in
front of the Minnesota state legislature, after I talked,
and said: Police reports say (she said the exact same
thing to the New York State legislature), ``Police reports
say, that Michael Carneal,'' the Paducah killer, ``had his
eyes closed when he committed that crime.''

Now, his first bullet went between his girlfriend's
eyes. He got eight shots, eight hits, on eight different
kids--five of them head shots. Now, the truth is this: Not
in the police reports, but in one of the psychological
evaluations, Michael Carneal says this, ``I'm not sure
what happened. It's all kinda confused. I think I closed
my eyes for a minute.'' Understand? He says, ``I think I
closed my eyes for a minute,'' and the video-game
industry--despicable individuals, like the tobacco
industry--stands up before a state legislature, and says:
Police reports say he had his eyes shut. They say no such
thing! Every single witness statement says he had his eyes
wide open, with this weird, blank look on his face.

Do you understand the kind of industry we're
fighting here? As we try to reel this stuff in.
Speed: That actually leads to another question I
have. Did you hear about a case, this was in 1997. The
New York Post covered it, and it involves the show
``Pokémon.'' I'll just read you what the coverage said:
``A Japanese TV network cancelled broadcasts''--

Grossman: Oh, I did read about that!
Speed: Six hundred children rushed to the hospitals
with epileptic-type seizures, Tuesday night, after
watching the program. The next morning, another hundred.
There were various explanations offered for what happened,
but no one actually ever quite concluded what happened.
What comment do you have about that?

Grossman: Well, some of the recent statements on
that--I think the AMA and others have looked at it--is:
They created colors in frequency that basically created
epileptic seizures in the kids. This industry is actively
seeking--they're spending billions of dollars on just
the right frequencies, just the right colors, just the
right rapid-fire screen changes, to addict the children to
these images. And they are seeking, with all their might
and soul, with all the cleverness of modern science, to
find just the right way to do it. And they went over the
top, on that one, and--oops, they back off, now. But,
something just short of that is being done every day!

Let me give you some of the stuff we know about TV.
We know that there's a powerful link between television
and obesity, and that's been reported in the national
news, and everybody's nailed that one down. Why? Well,
number one, you're addicted to TV. You truly are. It's an
addictive, toxic substance, with those rapid-fire images.
And the violent image is the most addictive thing of all
to the children--they cannot turn away from it. It is, for
them, vital survival data, and within 18 months, they
develop the ability to scan their environment for survival
information. So, number one, it's physically addictive to
the kids.

Number two is the question of obesity. It's very
clear-cut, that we're taking an addictive substance and
giving it to children. And, they're like some kids sitting
on drugs. But it's more than just that; it's more than the
lack of activity. The most creative, innovative, ingenious
people in America are paid vast amounts of money to
convince you, and your child, to overeat. They've got just
the right frequencies, they've just the right colors, just
the right screen change, to convince you to go out and
consume large quantities of sugary substances--number one.
What does that do? It creates obesity--an explosion of
obesity. But that, also, has created an explosion of
child-onset diabetes. And we know that that is also
linked to television!

So, we've got obesity, we've got child-onset
diabetes. What else have we got? Well, there's great data
linking television and anorexia and bulemia. Around the
world, we have wonderful little communities, that have
never had anorexia and bulemia, like American Samoa. And,
then Western television appears, and the twisted,
distorted image of American feminine beauty comes on, and,
in a very short period of time, we've got little girls,
who are literally starving themselves to death in order
to meet that standard.

Let me give you the really hot area of research, and
this is quite revolutionary, and quite new, and everything
I've told you so far is solid; but now, we're into a realm
that, I need to say, up front, is still being researched.
But the initial data indicate that there is a powerful
link between television and Attention Deficit Disorder.
What we do is, these rapid-fire screen images are given to
the kids--``Sesame Street,'' for example. A great show in
intent, but the rapid-fire images of ``Sesame Street''
pound away at the kids' brain. MTV, of course, is even
worse.

And, these rapid-fire images--bam! bam! bam!--are
hammering the child! What happens is, the child learns to
take their data in at rapid-fire imagery, like that, and
they never develop an attention span! What is Attention
Deficit Disorder? It is a child who never developed an
attention span. Television shreds your attention span.
What happens is, the child has spent a lifetime, rivetted
in front of that TV, growing fat, and having these
rapid-fire images pounded into their brain, and then, at
the age of 5 or 6, we put them in school, and the teacher
stands up there and says [speaks like a slow-speed
recording], ``T-h-e t-r-a-n-s-i-t-i-v-e v-e-r-b i-s
r-r-r-rrrrr.'' And, the kid is sitting there, trying to
change channels! He's freaked out!

And what's our answer? Drug him! Our answer is to
drug them. We have messed those kids up so badly, in
their youth, by doing the thing that the American Academy
of Pediatrics, and the Surgeon General, and the AMA, say,
``Don't do it!'' And, then, when they're whacked-out, we
drug 'em! And the result is horror.

That thing that you talked about with Pokémon, was
just the tip of the iceberg, of the way that they're using
intense manipulation of screen imagery, colors, rapid-fire
imagery changes, in order to make this a powerfully
addictive substance for children. At the heart of the
addictive substances, is the violence, which is being fed
to the kids: Like nicotine, the violence is addictive;
like nicotine, it has an unfortunate side-effect, and the
unfortunate side-effect is fear and violence, and violent
crime.
Speed: You don't seem to buy the argument of the some
of the people who were pioneering the Violence Initiative,
which is the idea that there are kids that are basically
born violent; or, if not born violent, by a very young
age, you can separate them out, and then you can track
them. In Virginia, at one point, they were actually
building jails in anticipation that one segment of the
population--many of them, in this particular case,
African-American--were going to become violent. And they
knew they were going to have a certain number of violent
offenders, therefore, they were building jails for them in
advance.

Grossman: Maybe, maybe, there is a tiny
percentage of human beings who are going to be violent.
But that percentage should not change, from decade to
decade, or generation to generation. If there is some
naturally occurring--and I'm saying if, we're not
conceding that, but maybe there is--if there is some
naturally occurring incidents of violence, then, that is a
standard, a stable, a normal process. Like the occurrence
of any other genetic process.

When you see an explosion of violence, you've got
to ask youself, ``What is the new factor? What is the new
variable?''

Understand this: When we talk about violent crime,
the first thing you have to realize is, you must ignore
the murder rate. Because medical technology saves ever
more lives, every year. A wound that, nine out of ten
times would have killed you in World War II, in Vietnam
you would have survived that same wound, nine out of ten
times. This last year, I've written three encyclopedia
entries, in the entry to the Oxford Companion to American
Military History, and we've laid the scholarly foundation
to say this: If we had 1930s-level technology in
America--think of the 1930s now: no penicillin, no cars,
no telephones, for all practical purposes, in most
places--if we had 1930s technology, the murder rate could
easily be ten times what it is. You've got to look at the
aggravated assault rate, the rate at which people are
trying to kill one another off. With that as our measure
of crime--we're allowing for population growth--violent
crime, per capita, has gone up sevenfold since 1957 to
the middle of this decade. It's gone down just a tiny bit,
recently, mostly because of a fivefold increase in the
incarceration rate, and a good economy, but we're still
six times greater per capita in the rate at which we're
trying to kill one another off, than we were in 1957.

But look: In Canada, since 1964, the per-capita
assault rate has gone up fivefold, and attempted murder (a
classification we do not have) has gone up sevenfold. In
just 15 years, according to Interpol data, per-capita
violent crime went up almost fivefold in Norway and
Greece; nearly fourfold in Australia and New Zealand.
There was a clean tripling in per-capita violent crime,
in these 15 years, in Sweden. And per-capita violent crime
approximately doubled in seven other European nations.

Some of these nations, like Norway and Sweden and
Denmark, that have seen these doubling and tripling and
quintupling of violent crime, they've been keeping track
of violent crime for over a thousand years. And, never, in
the last thousand years, have we seen anything remotely
like this. This is unprecedented for violent crime to
just double in 15 years; it's staggering, for it to go
up fivefold in 15 years. It's stunning!

The question you need to keep asking yourself is:
What is the new variable, what is the new ingredient? And,
the new ingredient is, that we are creating killers, we
are creating sociopaths.

The analogy I use is to AIDS: AIDS doesn't kill
people. It makes you vulnerable to be killed by other
things. What happens is, if you get AIDS, then pneumonia,
or the flu, or a cold can kill you, because your immune
system has been destroyed. What I call--and it's now a
widely accepted term--Acquired Violence Immune Deficiency
Syndrome, AVIDS. Most of us, have a natural violence
immune system. If that violence immune system is
destroyed, now, the things that shouldn't have killed us,
will result in death: things like poverty, gangs,
availability of guns, anger that generates from racism,
child abuse. All of these are variables that can cause
violence. But, whereas before, we should have been able to
control those in a healthy organism, they're now resulting
in death and horror to a degree we've never seen before.

There's a new ingredient, a new factor, in the
equation that is causing death, and horror, and
destruction around the world. In Japan, we saw a 30%
increase in juvenile violent crime in 1997 alone. In
India, in those same 15 years that Interpol was keeping
track, they didn't have the assault rate in India, but
they did have the murder rate: And it doubled in 15
years. Imagine that vast nation, in just 15 years, seeing
the murder rate double. Why? Because, just a little while
prior to that, they put a television in every village in
India, and every night, the villagers gather together and
watch, what? ``Dallas.'' And, all kinds of strange,
bizarre, American, violent footage, that has a profound
impact on that community.

Brazil and Mexico: Same story. When we see an
explosion of violent crime there. They export drugs to us,
and we export electronic drugs to them. And, quite
frankly, our exporters are just as vile as theirs are, if
not more so. Ted Turner is quoted in the California House
of Representatives resolution on violence, in May 1999, as
saying: ``Television violence is the number-one cause of
violent crime in America.'' The president of CBS, after
the Littleton shootings, he was asked if he thought the
media had anything to do with the shootings in Columbine
High School, and his answer was: ``Anyone who thinks the
media had nothing to do with it, is an idiot.''

They know it! They know what they're doing! And they
continue to sell it around the world, like some drug lord
selling death and horror and destruction, just to put
money in the pockets of a few. It is despicable. And, what
we've got to do is, get these guys reeled in, as a
civilization. Otherwise, the very fabric of our
civilization is at risk.

It's Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The
foundation of our civilization is providing security and
safety. And if the foundation of the building crumbles,
the building crumbles. Or, to rephrase what Maslow was
saying: People will always sacrifice liberty for security.
If the situation gets bad enough, people will do whatever
they have to do, to make sure their children aren't
butchered on the streets. They will oppress minorities,
they will oppress the underclass, they will give up civil
liberties. They will do whatever they have to do.

Steinberg: Let me go on to something that your point
raises. When you gave a television interview at the New
Jersey conference, I was very struck by your discussion of
a kind of hierarchy of responsibilities that
law-enforcement officers--and, to a similar extent,
soldiers--have, in fulfilling their particular role within
society: to protect the innocent.

Grossman: When I train law-enforcement officers,
across America, one of the things I tell them is this:
``The single surest way to get a dose of post-traumatic
stress disorder--the research is so solid, it shows it
over and over again; the surest way to get a dose of
PTSD--what we call `the gift that keeps on giving,'
because it doesn't just mess you up, but it messes up your
unmet spouse, and your unborn children, in the years to
come. Now, the single surest way to make that happen, is
to commit an atrocity or a criminal act.'' Now, in the
moment of truth, when you're under great stress, there is
a desire for vengeance. And, what I teach them, is, you
must seek justice, not vengeance. Vengeance will destroy
you: and not just you, but your spouse, and your kids.
Whoever you think you're avenging, did not want to pay
that price. And you must dedicate yourself, ahead of time,
towards justice, not vengeance.

What I tell them is this: ``As a law-enforcement
officer, you have three goals: First, and foremost, above
all else is: protect the innocent.'' I make the analogy of
the sheep, and wolves, and the sheepdogs: The sheep are
kind, innocent, gentle creatures, who can only hurt one
another by accident. The wolves will feed on the sheep,
without mercy. The sheepdog, is the thing that stands
between us and the wolves. And, the thing that makes the
sheepdog different from the wolf, is that the sheepdog
can not harm the sheep. If he does, the shepherd
eliminates him.

So, step number one, for the law enforcement officer
is, protect the innocent. Above all else.

Step number two is, convict the guilty. It's the
goal, but never at the price of number one.

And, step number three is, draw your retirement.
Okay?

Protect the innocent, convict the guilty, and draw
your retirement. After you've done those first two, and
you've served honorably for a lifetime, you deserve that
retirement.

And, I'll tell you, the suicide rate of the average
law enforcement officer, the average cop out there, has
two to four times greater chance of dying from their own
hands, than they do from criminal gunfire--and we're
losing a lot to criminal gunfire. The average law
enforcement officer, according to one body of research,
has a life expectancy of over a decade less, than the
average citizen. What I try to do is, provide the nuts and
bolts for them to accomplish those three things, and to
accept those priorities that will make it possible for
them to do that.

And, that's what we must do.
Speed: In the Amadou Diallo case, one of the things
that I raised in an article for EIR, is that one had to
look at what I believe to be the problem of the
``Nintendo cop,'' the sort of training that doesn't
provide what he needs.

Grossman: I had the privilege to read that,
Dennis, and I thought it was particularly well-written.
But, I hope you'll forgive me, if I tell you that I would
take a slightly different angle on that.

What we need to realize, number one, this business of
emptying the weapon. That used to be the norm. That was
the norm! Our cops were basically Barney Fife, you
remember on the Andy Griffith Show? Andy Griffith was very
wise, in not letting Barney have any bullets. You
understand? Because Barney Fife is the most dangerous
human being out there, and you put a loaded gun in his
hand, and you're in a heap o' trouble.

Now, what we do, is we prepare our guys for combat.
We do the FATS trainers, and we say, ``Under this
circumstance, when this stimulus is in front of you, you
may fire! Under this circumstance, you may not!'' And,
if you drill and you drill on these things, and you shoot
the wrong person, you don't graduate from the academy.
And, we put them in ``simunition environments,'' where you
are firing paint pellets at one another. These paint
pellets are very fearsome: They're coming at 200-300
feet per second, they're 9|mm marking capsules; when they
hit, they hurt, bad. You're under a great deal of
stress--you're inflicting pain on somebody else, they're
inflicting pain on you. It's like a boxing match with
pistols. What happens is, the first couple of times people
do that, their heart rate is through the roof! And they're
very fearful individuals. But, if we do more and more of
this training, they become inoculated against that stress;
they become cool, calm professionals.

I would say to you, that, around America, the answer
is become very clear, that the answer to preventing the
Amadou Diallo-type tragedies--which, remember, back in the
old days, it was the norm, except the guy would fire six
shots. We had two officers, they would fire six shots
each; they emptied their revolvers; they go ``bang, bang,
bang, bang, bang, bang--click, click, click, click, click,
click''--and then they'd stopped. Because you get scared
out of your wits, and your going to fire your weapon at
your opponent until your opponent drops, or something
interrupts you, like you run out of ammo.

But the major difference is--that's happening far
less often--that we're giving them more ammo. They've got
a 15-round magazine, and the average officer can empty
that 15-round magazine in 4 seconds flat. And the average
individual can't die that fast. So, you've got this
bizarre circumstance, in which they need this, so, how are
you going to teach them to use that? Well, the police
department of a major Western city did some very nice
research. They contacted many different police
departments, and they found out how many shots were fired
per officer, per engagement. This is our Amadou Diallo
situation. How many guys are shooting too many rounds?
And, then they correlated that to in-service training,
especially in-service training with ``simunition'' and
FATS, which are our simulators--our paint-ball and our
video simulators. What they found out was, that the more
in-service training you did, the less number of rounds per
officer fired. And, the more hits per officer: That is,
when they fired, they hit their target, number one, and
number two, they didn't go into this horrendous ``spray
and pray mode,'' in which, even at pointblank range
against an unarmed man, less than half your bullets hit
the target.

The fellow who was doing the research, called another
city's police department, and asked: ``Do you have trouble
with officers firing too many shots?'' And the other guy
laughs, and says, ``Yes! We call it the `Metro Spray.'
That was true a couple of years ago.'' He asked, ``How did
you prevent it?'' He said, ``We did the in-service
training. We take every one of our cops, and we bring them
through 40 hours a year of in-service training with
`simunition' and FATS.''

This is the answer!

What happened in New York, was lack of training. And
lack of proficiency. And, when you get a scary situation,
and in this tragic situation, these officers, to a certain
degree, they become four Barney Fifes, with 15 rounds each
in their hands: And the result is tragedy.

How do you prevent a Barney Fife? You train him,
train him, train him, with ``simunition'' and FATS. The
result is, you've got an individual who's going to be a
cool, calm, collected individual. I mean, who do you want
stopping you in the middle of the night? Barney Fife, or
Andy Griffith? Marshal Dillon, or Officer Wacko? And,
that's what we're talking about, here.

They use a little bit of this training, but they need
much, much more, and they need to be held accountable and
responsible for it.

I just trained in one major Texas police department,
and they don't do any in-service training, with this
major metropolitan police department, except to get out on
the range twice a year. That's unacceptable! But, they are
starting to take these guys, and prepare them for school
shootings, and having them do ``simunition'' training;
and, the cops love it!

The problem is, that we're not allocating sufficient
money and funding to get the training that the cops need.

And, I don't know about you, but, if I'm going to be
out on the street, and there's a 22-year-old kid with a
semi-automatic pistol on his hip, I want him to be trained
to the gills! To perform appropriately. And, anything
less than that is unacceptable. And, to have major police
departments that aren't doing ``shoot/no-shoot'' and FATS
and ``simunition'' training, at least once a year: I
submit to you, it's unacceptable.
Speed: If we had had anybody in New York who had been
that straightforward, at the point that this whole matter
occurred, you wouldn't even have the kind of tensions,
that you have in the city right now.

Grossman: Yes! If they would just stand up and
say, ``Our guys blew it! It was dumb! It was horrible!''
And their answer is more training, and ``what we're going
to do is, we're going to train them, and we're going to
prevent this from happening.'' That's why they're hiring
me, across America, to do all of this stuff. And you're
quite right, that this whole business of circling the
wagons, is just tragic.

Now, since you've been going around the country, have
you encountered a lot of people who want to do something
about the video empire? That includes legislation and
litigation. I wanted to know if you can tell us something
about that.

Grossman: When it comes to these violent video
games, a lot of people have real second thoughts about
cops and soldiers having them. They have serious second
thoughts about adults having them. But, the one thing,
that we can all agree on is: that children don't need
them.

I believe in an America, in which we can trust the
citizens--the adult citizens. I'm an adult. I can have a
cigar, I can have a beer, I can have sex, I have a car, I
can have a gun. But, if you give any of that to my
9-year-old, you're criminal. And, that's what we realize
with these murder simulators.

Now, how are we going to deal with that? Well, first
off, is simply education. Remember, we have an absolutely
irresponsible industry, who will stand up in front of
state legislatures and misrepresent things, horrendously.
So, what we've got to do, is: We've go to get people
educated, number one, and certainly, that's one of the
wonderful things your organization is doing.

Number two, is legislation. I tell people, ``When it
comes to protecting our kids, even the most libertarian of
us, understands we need laws.'' Do we need laws that say,
you can't sell guns to kids? Yes. Do we need laws that say
you can't sell tobacco, or alcohol, or pornography, to
kids? Yes, we need those laws. And, everybody agrees. Now,
can kids still get pornography, or tobacco, or alcohol, if
they really want it? Sure. Does that mean the laws are no
good? No, we need those laws. They're part of the
solution.

The best thing that the laws do, is, they are a form
of education. I put seat belts on my kids all my life. I
was never buckled up, when I was kid. How did I know to
buckle my kids up? Well, it's the right thing to do.
That's why I do it. How do I know it's the right thing to
do? Because, if I don't do it, a cop will give me a
ticket. It's the law, and the law educates you as to what
is the right thing to do. And that becomes the goal.

Now, what kind of laws do we need? All we need to do,
is, take the industry's own rating system, and simply
enforce that. The industry has games they rate ``M.'' An
M-rated video game means ``mature.'' What does that mean?
That's a pretty vague concept. The industry says, an
M-rated game is: no child under 17. In case you haven't
been keeping track, MC-17, is what we call X-rated movies,
nowadays. An M-rated video game is identical to an
X-rated movie, according to the industry. Except, the
pornography industry accepts regulations on their
products, when it comes to kids; this industry is
functioning beneath the porn industry; beneath the
tobacco industry; beneath the alcohol industry, or the
gun industry. Guns, booze, tobacco--they all accept
regulation on their product, when it comes to kids.

This one industry says, that you cannot regulate
their product--violent visual imagery--when it comes to
kids.

So, when it comes to the violent video games, they're
wrong. We can regulate those products, and we will.

You know what they say? They stand up and they say,
``Look. People buy these violent things, so we sell 'em.
The reason why America has all this violent stuff out
there, is because Americans want it, and so, we sell it.
We're driven by the marketplace.''

So, we're going to regulate the video games. We're
going to regulate these violent video games, just like we
do with pornography, and enforce the rating systems.

There's other things that we can do: We can tax media
violence. You have a Constitutional right to alcohol--it
was a Constitutional amendment that repealed Prohibition.
You have a Constitutional right to guns, according to most
people's reading of the Second Amendment. But nobody
says that that Constitutional right for an adult to have
alcohol or guns, means that you have the right to sell it
to children.

We've got to put taxes on this substance, we've got
to regulate this substance: If we don't, we're in a heap
of trouble.

We've got the education, we've got the
legislation--the final step is litigation--the lawsuits.
There is a $130 million Federal lawsuit against the
video-game industry, generated out of the Paducah case.
Remember? Eight shots, eight hits, on eight different
kids. Clear-cut video-game linkage. And, the lawsuit is
progressing quite nicely.

Now, this kind of litigation, we think, is happening
across America. I'll give you just one example. There was
a subway tollbooth burning in New York: What happened, was
a group of kids poured gasoline underneath the back door
of a subway tollbooth. They left a trickle-trail, and then
they ignited that trickle-trail, and the gasoline inside
the tollbooth ignited, and burned the operator over some
70% of his body. As soon as that crime happened, there was
immediate talk of lawsuits, because that was a precise
copy-cat crime of the movie ``Money Train.'' Step-by-step,
precise copy-cat crime.

The family was talking lawsuits, and then, Boom! You
never heard another word.

What happened? The head of the Washington Trial
Lawyers Association told me that, he believes, in that
case, and many others: They settled out of court. And,
what they're going to do is, they're going to pay the
victims, and their family, and their lawyer, a large sum
of money, once a month, for the rest of their lives--as
long as they do, what? Keep their mouths shut. And, across
America, these lawsuits are being settled out of court,
for large sums of money. These people are responsible;
they cannot tolerate the lawsuits: We have a legal
obligation to hold them accountable. If you had a crib
that strangled your child, if you had a gas tank that
exploded in flames and burned your child to death, you'd
have an obligation to hold that industry accountable.

We have the safest cars, the safest airplanes, the
safest toys in the world, because, if they don't give us
safe products, we sue them.

And, we have an obligation to hold these people
accountable, and we need to let the average American out
there know, that, if you connect the dots, and there's a
media linkage to what happened, then, you have a
responsibility to go after the accessories to the crime.

Now, as I'm training cops across America, I tell them
this. I tell them, ``Look, we're not necessarily excusing
the criminal. This is not an excuse for the killer. But,
if you catch a 12-year-old with crack cocaine, what are
you going to do? You're going to bust 'em, right? And,
what's the first thing you're going to try to find out?''

Steinberg: Who the dealer is?

Grossman: You got it! And, that's what we're
talking about here. We're trying to find the accessories
to the crime--the dealers, the dope dealers--and make a
direct, one-to-one linkage, between violent visual imagery
and a specific violent criminal act. And, when we can see
clear-cut linkage, in which kids were inspired by a
specific movie, a specific TV show, a specific video
game--we're going to pin the tail on the donkey, and
hammer these guys into the ground like a tent stake!

Education, legislation, litigation.

We're doing it; it's the American system. And God
bless America, I think we can do it. And, I think we come
out the other end of this thing, as a better nation.

The preceding article is a rough version of the article that appeared in
The Executive Intelligence Review. It is made available here with the permission of The
Executive Intelligence Review. Any use of, or quotations from, this article must attribute them
to The
New Federalist, and The Executive Intelligence Review